Carrie White is a lonely and painfully shy teen-age girl with telekinetic powers who is slowly pushed to the edge of insanity by frequent bullying from both her class-mates and her religious, abusive mother.

Cultural critic David Kepesh finds his life -- which he indicates is a state of "emancipated manhood" -- thrown into tragic disarray by Consuela Castillo, a well-mannered student who awakens a sense of sexual possessiveness in her teacher.

A doctor takes in a mysterious man who washes ashore at her remote cottage with a gunshot wound. Quickly they both learn the killer has arrived to finish the job, while a storm has cut them off from the mainland.

When an affluent matriarch gathers her dysfunctional family for a holiday at their Northern California lake house, her carefully constructed weekend begins to come apart at the seams, leading her to question her own role in the family.

As her marriage dissolves, a Manhattan writer takes driving lessons from a Sikh instructor with marriage troubles of his own. In each other's company they find the courage to get back on the road and the strength to take the wheel.